


Darker and Darker

by MrsSaxon



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Darkest Timeline, F/M, Mental Illness, Mental Institutions, Oneshot, Sad, Unrequited Love?, this is not a happy fic, trigger warning, unstated love, very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 21:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3426047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsSaxon/pseuds/MrsSaxon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 3 Darkest Timeline AU. Before Abed decides to go dark, he visits Annie in the mental ward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darker and Darker

**Author's Note:**

> Just as a warning to anyone who has been in a mental health hospital or suffers from mental illness or disability: all of the depictions in this fic are fictional. However, I based these events off of firsthand accounts of mental health hospitals between the 70s and 90s. I have no idea how accurate or inaccurate my events are, but I'm not trying to purposely upset anyone or wrongly criticize the treatment of mental health in this country (though it is very very flawed). So, with that disclaimer, enjoy.

Here he was again. The Mt. Pleasant Mental Health Hospital. They tried so hard to make it sound like anything other than ‘crazy people jail’. But to someone who had been on the inside, they failed miserably.

How could Annie have ended up here? How could he have let this happen?

Taking a deep breath Abed clutched his messenger bag protectively and strode inside. With the gust of sanitized and dehumanized air, though, the memories flooded back.

Back in high school, his father had put him in here for two years. The reason being he had stopped speaking. To his father’s credit, he had waited months to have him committed. He had tried everything he knew how to get him to talk: bought him toys, let him skip school, took him to therapy. Abed’s therapists conjectured that it was his mother’s leaving that had stopped his voice and they all wanted him to cry about it, thinking that would help.

What Abed never told anyone was it was the bullies that convinced him to stop speaking. The bullies that thought he was weird, or crazy, or queer, or just annoying. He thought if he could silence his weirdness, the beatings would stop. Everyone would just stop noticing him. He was wrong.

The mental hospital was even worse. Every day he was monitored. Every day he was watched, for any signs of change. No one could diagnose his condition because there was nothing physically wrong with him. His chemicals were balanced, his brain was healthy. So they scrutinized him even further because they just didn’t know how to categorize him.

His father came to see him every weekend and he was as supportive as he could be:

“What do you think you are doing? Do you have any idea how much this is costing me? What an inconvenience this is? How can you justify spending your life in a box being stared it? Huh? And _why_ won’t you talk to me?!” his father ranted in most of his visits.

He thought Abed was doing this on purpose. Abed had to admit, despite his father’s lack of empathy, he still knew his son better than anyone else.

So after two years of being stared at, prodded at, getting a thorough look at the inner workings of what the American Psychological Association called ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’, he finally worked up the courage to speak again. “Please get me out of here,” was all he told his father. He pretended, for everyone’s sake, that their ‘therapy’ had worked, that he was cured. He got his GED and started working at his father’s falafel shop until…

“Abed!” Tim, his favorite orderly, caught him as soon as he walked in, “not relapsing are you?”

Abed waved robotically and shook his head, “No, I’m here to see a patient actually, Annie Edison. Do you know what room she’s in?”

“Sorry, can’t help you. You’ll have to take it up with the front desk. I got stuck with shadow- hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going?” Tim rushed forward to stop a determined Jeremy from climbing out the men’s bathroom window.

Jeremy was an inmate Abed also recognized. It pained him to know that he was still here. They gave Jeremy a complex cognitive disorder, but Abed knew that Jeremy was more sane and safe than most people outside. It was just that Jeremy thought differently, processed information differently, and different meant crazy. And that’s why he was here.

Gritting his teeth with dread Abed walked up to the front desk. Sheryl was sitting there, in her oval office, queen of all she surveyed.

“May I help you?” she growled through a half-contained Texas accent.

“I’m here to visit Edison, Annie,” Abed retorted, clutching at his shoulder strap.

Sheryl looked up and her eyes narrowed behind her spectacles, “Oh, it’s you. That Islamic boy… what was it you had again?” She tapped her fingers on the desk trying to remember, not even pretending to look up Annie’s file.

“I’m here to visit Edison, Annie,” he repeated. He hated Sheryl. Her husband had been killed during the 9/11 attacks and she held every Muslim person personally responsible.

“Oh, I’ll remember it later today,” she gave up, for now. Reluctantly she began typing, “Annie what?”

“Edison,” Abed enunciated with force, losing his patience.

Her fingers moved at glacial speed as she typed in her name, “Hmmm… it says here she’s in isolation. She can’t see anyone.” She glared at him smartly.

“Yes she can, I called ahead and got a permit from her doctor,” Abed retrieved the signed note from his bag.

Sheryl’s lips pursed as she took the document from him. After a quick glance, she set it down, “Very well. Room 304. You’ll need this back to show the orderlies.” Nearly dropping it before he could grab it, she pointedly turned her attention back to her screen.

Abed snatched the paper and headed for the elevator. How women like her were allowed to be mental healthcare professionals he’d never know.

Abed could feel nerves building up as the elevator slowly rose. The unpleasant familiarity of these walls was grating on him. He shook himself; he had to be strong for Annie. Annie wasn’t used to being dehumanized. Annie had never had to feel wrong. Annie was sunny and sensible and kind. He didn’t want to think about what this place was doing to her. But knowing what it had done to him had brought him here.

Ah, he recognized this floor. Sheryl had been lying, this wasn’t isolation at all. All the rooms along the west side of the third floor were for ‘group therapy sessions’. All that meant was the doctors let the inmates mill around together in large, spacious rooms with limited forms of entertainment. They were watched at all times by a couple of orderlies and nurses would come in and out, distributing pills and injections, but it was better than private rooms.

A private room had nothing whatsoever to recommend it, just a bed, a cabinet for clothes that weren’t yours, and an inoffensive portrait. The banality of that empty, white room had inspired Abed’s first try at a Dreamatorium, just as a means of escape.

He walked down to 304 and knocked on the door. The orderly standing guard there turned, but refused to open. Abed held up the doctor’s note, pressing it against the glass so the orderly could clearly read it. The orderly didn’t react, but he gently opened the door, letting Abed inside.

Abed slowly let his gaze wander, circumnavigating the whole room with one turn of his head. His heart sunk to see so many faces he recognized. There were some new ones. But there were always people needing ‘care’ and only a tiny percentage achieved ‘remission’. The ‘cured’ status was altogether laughable.

Abed would have dearly loved to have Britta here to criticize the capitalistic, corp-o-cratic regime of modern medicine. But Britta, like Jeff and Shirley, was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to remember how much she cared about Annie. He had thought about trying to inspire and galvanize the group to come see Annie, but. He was no Jeff Winger. And even when they came to school, there wasn’t enough of them present for Abed to bind together.

Troy he left out of this. Troy had wanted to come see Annie, but he was in the hospital. His throat was healing nicely, but the doctors wanted to keep him a little longer to make sure he didn’t rupture his stitches trying to talk. Everything was different now, after the night Pierce died, and he was almost certain this was the darkest timeline.

He realized he hadn’t spotted Annie yet and anxiously now, his eyes searched the room. He finally spotted her in the corner, crouched over a piece of paper and looking like she’d already lost about twenty pounds.

Cautiously, Abed approached, not wanting to startle her. Up close, he could see she was coloring with crayons. She appeared to be drawing the group, everyone with smiles on, a sun in the corner, everything as it should be.

“Annie?” he said quietly when he stood next to her.

Annie glanced up, “Just a minute Mr. Ludowicz, I’m just finishing my masterpiece.” She beamed like the Annie of old, like nothing was wrong.

Abed cocked his head and his eyebrows wrinkled with worry, “Annie, it’s Abed.” He spoke softly, the way people in movies talked to frightened animals.

“Hmm?” Annie looked up again, distracted. She didn’t recognize him. Her eyes stayed on him, not moving back to the paper, and suddenly her vision cleared, “Abed! Oh, Abed!” She almost leapt out of her chair, grasping him tight.

Abed felt the wind knocked out of him and tentatively he rubbed her shoulder. She looked up after a moment, “Did you bring the group?” she asked, eyes full and bright and shining.

“They wanted to come, but…” he faltered. What possible excuse could there be not to see her? He tried to recover quickly, “They wanted to come, but it’s just me this time. I promise, I’ll bring them next time.” He smiled, or hoped it was a smile.

“Oh… that’s nice,” Annie smiled a serene, empty smile and seemed to know nothing more. “Do you like my drawing?” she held it up to him.

Abed took it gently and sat down beside her, “It’s really great, Annie. It’s how things should be. The brightest timeline,” this time he was sure he was smiling.

But Annie just looked crushed. She stared at the picture, her face melting into despair, “Oh Abed, I’ve ruined everything. It’s all my fault!”

Before her eyes could well up with tears, he grabbed her hand, “No, no, it’s not. Okay? It’s not.” He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, trying to pull her back from the edge, “You didn’t shoot Pierce, the gun went off-”

“My gun, Abed, my gun!” her voice was thick with sobs, “If I hadn’t been carrying-”

“Shhh!” In desperation he reached out with his free hand and stroked her face, working to hold those tears at bay. He kept stroking and cradling her hand until her breathing was normal once again.

He had thought about doing Patch Adams when he came to see her. But looking at her now, her stretched and shrunken face, how he could see the ridges of her back when she’d hugged him, he didn’t think even Robin Williams could help.

“It wasn’t your fault, it was mine,” he said at last. He dropped his hand from her face to hold onto her cold, pale hand with both of his. “I knew that Jeff rolling that die would create divergent timelines, but I didn’t stop him. And now this has happened. It’s my fault,” he looked up at her, hoping she would understand.

Annie was looking gravely into the middle distance. There was no sign that she had heard him.

Abed swallowed, but tried not to get discouraged, “I’m going to fix it though, Annie. Somehow. I’m going to make this timeline better.”

She finally turned to him, “How?” she croaked.

“I have some theories,” he chewed his tongue, wondering if he should tell her, “if we could make it back to the prime timeline we could…”

“I was going to be a hospital administrator,” Annie interrupted, “I wanted to go to medical school, spend my life helping people. But I couldn’t save one of my best friends… how terrible is that?”

Abed searched through his many memories of hospital dramas for something comforting to say, but he was coming up blank. “Y-You’re not terrible,” he tried to say.

“You know you’re the only one who’s come to see me?” she continued, “None of the group, none of my family… this is where I belong. This is what I deserve.” She hung her head.

Abed squeezed her hand tightly, “Annie, no. I did this, I let you down, I let the group down. Just because you’re here doesn’t mean you deserve to be here.”

The tears were coming thick and fast now and there was nothing he could do to stop them. “I’ve lost two families… and it’s my fault! It’s all my fault!” That was the last of her coherence as the sobs took her. Annie curled into a tiny, drab ball and cried and cried. Annie, who should have been full of life and color and love, could only cry and cry. She was shaking so hard Abed could feel himself shaking too.

The next thing he knew he was being pushed away by two burly orderlies, “No! I want to stay with her!” he almost shouted. He realized his body was struggling against the enormous muscles pushing him away.

On the other side of the door he tried to make out her sobbing frame through the misted glass, but too many figures were hovering over her. He wouldn’t be allowed to see her again. They would mark it down on their clipboards that he had disrupted her. And he wouldn’t be allowed to see her again.

Whirling, Abed headed for the elevator and almost ran out the door, past the front desk, and outside. He paced around the side of the building until he stood under the window that looked onto room 304. There was no chance he could see her, but maybe she could see him, if they hadn’t moved her yet. Maybe knowing he was there and that he cared about her would help her through this. Annie had always cared about him; it was his turn to do the same.

From that moment on, he was resolved. If Annie was a stranger to the world, then he would make a world where she would be happy again.


End file.
